Audience panels

I think any worthwhile event will have solid discussion between participants. The implication of the traditional "talking head" conference is that the speakers have infinite wisdom to impart, and the audience are there to absorb as much of it as they can. At any good event the participants can have as much insight and experience to share as the speakers, so to have only a series of speakers doesn't make sense. At the Sydney side of the Summit, we created "audience panels" - we established a number of topics, people signed up for these, and speakers and other experts in the audience acted as convenors for the discussions. It's always interesting to see what panels people choose to join. The audience panels - in approximate order of their popularity - was as follows.

New business models: how to monetize content
What advertisers want today
Online social networks and media
The drivers of mobile content
Content overload and user filtering
User generated content
Globalization of media
The impact of legislation
The convergent newsroom
Bloggers: are they newsfinders, newsmakers, opinionshapers, or annotators?
Blogging and media
The long tail
Issues for specialist publishers

The Drivers of mobile content panel have posted a summary of their panel discussions. If you participated in one of the other panels, it would be great if you could post some of what you discussed or what was useful to you from the panels so others can benefit - thanks.